#paste-ups

The thing here is that both the visual Ed Sullivan face and its generic replacement look like out of place paste-ups. And maybe it was designed to do so for the Sullivan impression. The second image is just confusing, and I imagine eliciting some questions – something like “was this a rushed redrawing after someone spilled coffee on the proofs?” And I can imagine the reader of the original in 1971 able to read it with the right inflection. I do not know what the second one lands on – if they can even land on a heard generic PT Barnum vibe.

The site of the historic Battle of Street Art in Shoreditch.

California Beat generation collage artist and painter Jess is known for “paste-ups” such as this one. Utilizing hundreds of images from books, old magazines, steel engravings, and newspapers, his works frequently contain references to mythology, the occult, or the divining powers of the tarot.